According to a Thursday blog post, Google is beginning to roll out agentic capabilities to its AI Mode. For now, the only agentic capability available is restaurant reservations. Users will be able to ask AI mode to find them a reservation that matches their specific needs, including party size, date, time, location, and preferred food type.

F or the climate concerned, the rise of the AI-reliant internet query is a cause for alarm. Many people have turned to ChatGPT and other services for simple questions. And even basic Google searches include an AI-derived result.

But it's difficult to know for certain without access to the sorts of details that you'd only get by running a data center, such as how often the hardware is in use, and how often it's serving AI queries. So, while academics can test the power needs of individual AI models, it's hard to extrapolate that to real-world use cases.

Amid growing concerns about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence, Google says it has calculated the energy required for its Gemini AI service: Sending a single text prompt consumes as much energy as watching television for nine seconds.

For a while now, the tech industry has been shifting into the “agentic AI’ era. Simply put, it’s where an AI performs a multi-step task for you, like acting on a request such as “reserve a table for six at the nearest ramen shop with at least a 4-start rating on Wednesday.

AI Mode can now display open slots at restaurants and guide you to the booking page. For other food and dining queries, it can curate responses based on your Search and Maps history.

Alphabet’s Google introduced on Wednesday a new lineup of Pixel smartphones and gadgets, intensifying its efforts to embed artificial intelligence across a wide ecosystem of products.

The Made By Google event was not only a showcase of Google’s latest Pixel hardware, but a launchpad for many new AI features. I’m typically skeptical of the current generation of AI, but as I checked out the new software across various demo sessions,